Russia risks becoming ungovernable and descending into chaos
economist.com
economist.com
If "governable" means that each politician in the opposition is assassinated, and each free journalist is killed, and thousands of young Russians are sent to a meat grinder for no reason, and the government is commiting war crimes each day, and the politicians behave like pathological liars alienated from the reality, and each qualified worker is quitting the country in mass...
If "governable" means this, then maybe the system is too rotten to be saved
Sounds like we’re getting the closer to our mission accomplished moment.
No. It's to get Russia out of Ukraine. Cleaning up a failed nuclear state is in nobody's interest.
Seems in the play book, overthrow of unfriendly regime by any means.
I sincerely believe McFaul isn’t able to think of the next step. He is thinking deontologically just as Putin (and I dare say the Russian people too) are thinking about survival.
It would be good to think of the long term consequences of any foreseeable outcome. Hopefully it all goes well: Putin falls and is replaced by an internationalist. Frankly the Afghanistan debacle has caused me to doubt the wisedom and capacity for longer term thinking of the American political-military leadership. Hubris damns us all.
It's easy to get confused given their strong propaganda, but if you want to be dispassionate about the subject, this isn't a recent development, it goes back 300 years before NATO.
As a european, I'm glad that NATO is backing Ukraine, otherwise it might've been going the way of Georgia or Chechnia just to mention a couple in recent times.
Russia is a major producer of cobalt, nickel, copper, molybdenum, bauxite and uranium [1].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_industry_of_Russia
Interesting that I would consider one of the major articles is Russia's educated emigrants, but that's another matter.
US and NATO diplomats were crystal clear that after the USSR's fall, the former Soviet states should not be invited into NATO. And later that they should not be invited into the EU. Even with USSR gone, they were in Russia's sphere of influence, and making those overtures would be provocative.
The US pushing for a military alliance with Ukraine is what initially set Putin on trying to take control of Ukraine. That is a mighty long border to share with a US ally. Everything went downhill from there.
So a very, very cynical read of this situation would be that the US and NATO goaded this war specifically so that Putin would play his hand, and the entire world would watch as Russia crumbled. That their entire military was a front for crumbling soviet era technology and resources. The problem with building a society where the powerful steal everything not nailed down is that they also do that to the military. US and NATO intelligence likely knew this.
And given how brazenly the US and NATO have supported Ukraine through this, I would also hazard a guess that they know that most if not all of Russia's nukes won't actually fly.
EDIT since multiple responses have asked about a source[1] on the nato comment:
> The present crisis has its roots in a long-brewing contest over Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became independent but for decades joined neither with Russia nor with the West. The United States, for its part, expanded its NATO alliance but initially sidestepped Ukraine. It recognized that Russia, sharing deep ties and a 1,426-mile land border with Ukraine, might oppose such a move by force. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, cabled from Moscow in 2008. “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
> Later that year, however, President George W. Bush pressured NATO to pledge that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Although momentum toward membership stalled for multiple reasons, Ukraine pursued an association agreement with the European Union that moved more quickly. When, in 2014, Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity replaced a Russian-oriented government with a pro-Western one, Russia swiftly annexed Crimea, home to its Black Sea naval base, and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/23/ukraine-ta...
Can you provide the source for this, please?
> The US pushing for a military alliance with Ukraine is what initially set Putin on trying to take control of Ukraine.
Why do you think so? Can't there be another reason for invasion?
Sure[1]. If you google you will find the direct quote in this paragraph in many places.
> The present crisis has its roots in a long-brewing contest over Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became independent but for decades joined neither with Russia nor with the West. The United States, for its part, expanded its NATO alliance but initially sidestepped Ukraine. It recognized that Russia, sharing deep ties and a 1,426-mile land border with Ukraine, might oppose such a move by force. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” William J. Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia and current CIA director, cabled from Moscow in 2008. “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/23/ukraine-ta...
And I'd take William J Burns words with some grain of salt. It's likely "anyone" who he had to find were from some selected circle of rather like-minded persons.
Your link doesn't say anything close to that.
Do you have a source for this? All I could find was the Warsaw and Budapest pacts. I'm not trying to nitpick. I share the same view but when I explain this to people they alway say these are soviet lies.
What is provocative about joining NATO ? It is a purely defensive alliance. They are absolutely no threat to Russia. The only reason to be against anyone joining NATO is if you were planning to invade them. And guess what happened ?
Surprisingly there exist countries whose neighbors do not run into defensive alliances excluding their neighbors at the first opportunity, why is that?
Mexico’s real life stance relative to Russia isn’t relevant for the example to hold.
Also, how were the missiles on Cuba defensive ?
You see, that's what you "both sides do it" people keep missing. Both sides aren't equal. One side tramples their own neightbors, so their neighbors hate them. The other side tramples other people's neighbors so that their enemies are really far away. Russia is a losing nation playing losing strategies, and you Russia lovers are losers too.
I gave a hypothetical example to illustrate how America would be provoked by a defensive alliance on its border.
Nothing more or less than this and the “you X people” rhetoric doesn’t apply.
It's like if I said "well but if we could time-travel, then X". But we can't! That hypothetical has no connection to reality. And neither does yours.
Ah, yes. The "she was asking for it" defense.
Your honor, she totally wanted it. There was nothing I could do. I had no agency, effectively.
There was a terrible civil war that killed far more people than the actual invasion, supported by a lot of outsiders and targeted at civilians. But as shaky as it was, the government remained.
Russia wouldn't have the dubious benefit of American nation-building, but honestly is probably better off without it. The fact that there are nukes on the line is awful, but in the end the next dictator would face the same mutually-assured-destruction math that Putin does.
A scarier scenario is Afghanistan, where the government we set up failed the instant we left. It was replaced by the same guys we kicked out in the first place, and is now fighting its own terrorist insurgency (who are also our enemies, for that matter). If there were nuclear weapons in Afghanistan they would almost certainly have been used already -- against each other.
Russia is, hopefully, a bit more like Iraq. They have the outline of a functional government. It may or may not fall to a dictator; that would depend on the circumstances of Putin's downfall. But the biggest thing to fear there is a failed nuclear state, even more than the specifics of who runs it.
If someone believes parent is wrong, it would be interesting to read why their interpretation is so different.
People tend to forget that not all of Putin's claims are propaganda and that Russia had some legitimate security concerns. The situation of ethnic Russians in the Donbas was a legitimate pain point for the Russians.
Of course, I will be downvoted and flagged like there is no tomorrow. But maybe some of you will start asking questions that the western governments would prefer you don't ask, just like with WMDs in Iraq.
Most sources agree on this. Even the war per se remains popular.
> the economy, while not stellar, is in good shape
The data do not show this, but sure. The harm is in long-term capital and workforce degradation, not anything acute.
> situation of ethnic Russians in the Donbas was a legitimate pain point for the Russians
Ethnic Russians are well treated by Moscow. Nobody predicts they'll create problems for the Kremlin. This article name drops the Caucusus. But there are various Turkic, Chechen and Siberian populations who would be the first to be expected to break from the Kremlin, albeit not imminently.
None of what you've said contradicts the article's thesis. The Russian state is weakening, and, if it continues on this trajectory, will lose control of its peripheries.
Based only my viewings, it seems there are a lot of Russians scared that America will take over Russia and that they have to win the war.
There are also many who know it is not safe to say their true feelings because they could get arrested.
Well, if I was talking with one of those Russians, I wonder how they think the 2 pathways would pan out. If Putin hadn't invaded, I think NATO would've left Putin/Russia alone and be satisfied with the status quo (with Putin supplying cheap energy to Europe, who cares if he's a corrupt jackass in his own country).
Now that invasion has happened and no time machines, what would a Putin victory look like? Even if he conquers Ukraine, the sanctions won't stop, i.e. even if the Ukranians laid down their arms, that would just end the shooting war but not the economic one.
Meanwhile, what would defeat look like? Even if Russia laid down their arms and left Ukraine, the economic sanctions won't stop either, until..? A Putin regime change? NATO wouldn't be satisfied if he just got a puppet to replace him. Meanwhile for the average Russian, Putin not being in power would be like what this article portrays - separatist conflicts; or Russia being under Western (or Chinese?) control.
So I can see why they'd prefer a NATO surrender rather than a Putin surrender...
And even if not, almost all of them will mostly complain privately, rather than do anything. Russia's society is very atomized.
If Putin walked back troops even to just the pre-2022 borders and ceased bombing Ukraine, he could get most sanctions reversed. If he withdrew from all but Crimes, he could negotiate an end to special arms shipments to Ukraine.
Only if Putin is badly beaten would the surrender be accepted as genuine, nowadays no one in NATO believes that he'll keep his promises. IMO of course.
in front of the public, the opposition parties, and all the media pundits.
The Russians have too many times just gone back on their word or broken international agreements just because it favoured them.
Which is a ridiculous paranoid delusion of grandeur, like the country is some wonderful place that America is desperate to come and plant a flag over. The West is so turned off by Russia we don't even want her fossil fuels.
This is largely the picture they want to see, choosing to ignore the reality. The USSR crash was also a surprise to unreasonable amount of its citizens. What's actually happening under the hood is massive wealth redistribution and a fundamental crash of the political system, and what comes out from the rubble won't be pretty, especially because a lot of passionate people fled the country. Something clicked in the heads of many people, this is not the usual frog boiling, demons are really out this time.
>The situation of ethnic Russians in the Donbas was a legitimate pain point for the Russians
No, it never was. The reason Donbas is somehow special at all is just that the FSB-led coup succeded in 2014 there, unlike similar attempts in Kherson, Odessa, Kharkiv etc which failed. Mariupol (at which the 2014 invasion had been stopped) is also Donbas and had no troubles post 2014 at all. (until 2022...) Had they succeed in other cities, the same point would have been made about those by the propaganda. Nobody cared about "the situation in Donbas" (whatever it is) pre 2014, neither did people really care about Crimea, it's all smoke and mirrors set up by Kremlin.
If something ever was a pain point for ethnic Russians as well as everybody else, it's regimes that were installed in Donetsk/Luhansk. These are man-eating systems. There's no Donbas anymore. Donbas is destroyed. Donetsk, once a thriving city, is largely depopulated at this point. And not due to "Ukraine attacking it for 8 years", mind you.
(context: I'm also Russian who followed all this not from the mainstream media, probably unlike some of your friends)
Does Russia have the military strength to keep Belarus in the fold and keep control over Georgia, Chechnya, etc, and keep Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan under their influence?
And Ukraine now has a national identity, patriotism, and a very modern army, and deep roots of cooperation and trust with the west. The US has always wanted a major influence satellite by Russia (besides Turkey), and holy crap do they have one with Ukraine. Ukraine will be the beneficiary of military and foreign aid for decades now.
If this was 100 years ago (as in no nuclear weapons), Ukraine would be a direct threat to Moscow. You chew up the best regular forces your enemy (whose capital Moscow is, what, a couple hundred miles away?), and you make them dip into reservists, while you build out a superior, better equipped, better trained, better motivated army, you know what happens historically?
Without nuclear weapons, I wouldn't be predicting Ukrainian victory in terms of repulsing the current invasions. I wouldn't be predicting they retake Crimea.
I would be predicting Ukraine would take Belarus, Moscow, complete control of the Black Sea, and all of Moscow's imperial, uh, Federation Members would break away. And likely all of Russia would become a vassal state of Ukraine.
I would think in modern society territorial occupation is a losing proposition. I think Ukraine (its government) is smart enough not to inflict to itself the pain of managing Belarus.
Today's Maxim Katz video argues that "the war party" exists only in Kremlin, and with fall of Putin and his closest allies, everybody else in Russia won't be interested in war, which is good.